Search 9 (L97)

Search 9 was published in 1998 and was designed on the basis of and used during the L97 curriculum period. Search 9 is called a learner’s book instead of a reader or a textbook and therefore has no corresponding workbook, as all the exercises follow each text. There are, however, both tapes and CDs connected to all the texts in the book and, in addition, a tape and CD with simpler texts for struggling pupils. As Search 9 provides many of the texts in two versions, a regular and a simpler one, it caters for at least two ability levels in pupils.

Compared to English now 2, Search 9 shows more influence of the communicative period, with its many role plays, discussions and real-life speech exercises.

Search 9 has many coloured photographs and drawings, and is 320 pages long. These include nine chapters, a section of individual reading, a section that provides facts and maps of four English-speaking countries, a section that explains grammar, a section on phonetic spelling, and a wordlist. ‘Growing up’, ‘Kings and queens’, ‘Sports’ and ‘Imagining India’ are examples of the nine chapters in the book.

51 At the end of each chapter, there is an entire page devoted to project work, where the pupils are to work in groups with exercises that reflect the texts and topics of the chapters.

The pupils are always given options, both for what to do and how to present their work. For instance, in the project work for the chapter called ‘The wild west’, the book suggests that the pupils could work with native Americans, Aboriginals, Samis, Intuits, Kurds, a famous person from the wild west, or several other topics. The book usually encourages the pupils to choose whatever way of presenting their topic they like, but the chapter on the wild west suggests the following: an interview, a debate, a poster, a survey, a slide show, or an exhibition. As the pupils have so many options, the project work is an exercise which is difficult to place in one category. This is why it has been given its own category, only featured in Table 3 below, which provides an overview of the types of oral activities in Search 9.

Table 3: Oral exercises in Search 9 (1998)

Type of oral exercise Number of oral exercises

Discuss/talk about given topic 23 (23%)

Communication in order to produce written work 17 (17%) Explain/tell something to partner/group 12 (12%)

Discussion 12 (12%)

Project work after each chapter (Search 9 only) 9 (9%) Share/present own work (for partner/group/class) 8 (8%)

Listening exercises 8 (8%)

Interview 4 (4%)

Role play 4 (4%)

Ask and answer questions (pair work) 2 (2%)

Reading aloud (pair/group) 1 (1%)

Game 0 (0%)

Pattern drills 0 (0%)

Pronunciation practice 0 (0%)

Total number of oral exercises 100

The largest category of exercises is ‘discuss/talk about a given topic’ (23%). Search 9 uses the term ‘discuss’ very often and is clearly influenced by its time, i.e. the communicative period

52 in that it often encourages creative speech. In the book, ‘discuss’ sometimes means just to talk about a given topic and it does not specify that one should argue one’s case, but merely talk about it using one’s own words. The pupils are also often told to discuss a topic that the textbook has not told them enough about, so it might be a challenge for them to properly discuss it. In these cases, the exercises have been placed in the ‘discuss/talk about given topic’

category. Sometimes, however, the exercises that use the term ‘discuss’ encourage the pupils to share their thoughts on a given topic and provide arguments for their opinions, or they are given provocative statements that are easy to provide an opinion on or to discuss, for instance

‘girls are better at sports than boys’. If any of the ‘discuss exercises’ have proven to be real discussions and forming arguments, they have been placed in the ‘discussion’ category (12%).

The second largest category of oral activities in Search 9 is pupils having to communicate in order to produce written work (17%). These are group exercises, such as making a poster together, but also pair work that asked the pupils to cooperate on writing, for instance by making limericks together. Several of the exercises encourage the pupils to tell or explain something to a partner or a group. Examples of these are explaining what they think a person from a text looks like, saying why they enjoyed reading in a text, and explaining a sport they know well. The exercises that challenge the pupils to share or present something (8%) are usually to be done in front of the class. Often this is written work that they are to read aloud, or explaining why they enjoyed reading a text of their own choosing. However, in one case the pupils are told to make a short presentation about a newspaper for the entire class. This shows that oral pupil presentations had become part of the English lessons in the late 1990’s.

Search 9 is the only textbook out of the four studied in this section that has specific listening exercises, such as fill-in-the-blanks exercises while the pupils listen to a text or a monologue, or look for the message in a song. Role playing parts of a story and performing a dialogue are two of the four role play exercises featured in the textbook. An example of the four interview exercises is pupils interviewing an adult and asking them about how their childhood was, for example about what games they played, if they watched TV, what kind of music they listened to, and about crime, pollution and traffic. In comparison to On the go: 2 and English now 2, Search 9 only has two oral ask-and-answer-questions-in-pairs exercises, whilst the two other textbooks had many. Both of these exercises ask the pupils to make questions about a given topic and text for each other and to ask and answer each other’s questions.

There is only one exercise that has to do with only reading aloud. Reading something aloud is mentioned in other exercises, but was often followed by ‘discuss’ or ‘explain’

53 something. Thus, these exercises have been put into other categories, as the reading part of the exercise is not the most time-consuming part. The Search 9 learner’s book contains no games or oral pattern drills.